Portable electronic devices, such as portable media players, have become ubiquitous in today's society. As they have proliferated, so have the number and types of hardware accessories that are designed to interact with these portable media players. These accessories range in complexity from, for example, charger cables to speaker systems to alarm clock docking stations to complex automotive entertainment systems.
Portable electronic devices can be designed to include a number of functions such as a media player, a calendar, an alarm clock, a web browser, and GPS navigation among many other such functions. Examples of a portable electronic device include mobile phones, tablet computers, portable media players, PDA's and the like. Each function supported by a portable electronic device can have various sub-functions or settings associated with it. For example, a media player function can be used to access media stored on the portable electronic device or obtained via the internet. A media player included in a portable electronic device may have other specific sub-functions such as play, stop, forward, reverse, record, etc. The media player function may allow the user to control the output volume of the media being played, adjust equalizer settings, etc. Conventionally, each of the functions available on a portable electronic device is manually accessed by a user of the media device. Also, conventionally settings associated with each function are also accessed manually by the user of the portable electronic device.
In general, for an accessory to be able to interact with or otherwise provide additional functionality for a portable electronic device, the accessory and electronic device need to be able to communicate with each other according to a common protocol. Products that are designed to work seamlessly together and to be deeply integrated with each other can be said to be part of the same digital ecosystem. As a well-known example, Apple's ecosystem includes portable electronic devices such as the iPhone® and the iPad® as well as numerous accessories that bear a label such as “Made for iPhone®” thus informing consumers that the particular accessory was designed to specifically operate with an iPhone. The expected interoperability and quality standards for a given ecosystem may have a strong influence on consumer buying preferences. Thus, it is desirable to ensure that products that are part of a given ecosystem are manufactured to the standards expected of the products. Knock-off, counterfeit and fraudulently manufactured accessories may not be manufactured to the stringent standards expected of the ecosystem and thus may not work properly or may even cause damage to a host portable electronic device.